A (mostly) progressive rock discography

Kronomyth 8.0: GEORGE AND STANLEY MAKE A CAMEO. When George Duke and Stanley Clarke signed with Epic to record an album together, the label apparently expected a jazz fusion album. I’m with the labels this time. As a fan of Stanley Clarke’s music (with and without RTF) and Frank Zappa, I was expecting a Journey To Love. Instead, what Epic and the rest of us got was a Top 40 R&B/disco album. Now, if you’d been paying close attention, you would have heard this kind of music creeping into Stanley Clarke’s records, so the commercial direction of The Clarke/Duke Project can’t be called a complete surprise. But if you’re expecting me to heap praise upon it, I would kindly point you in the direction of a different site, perhaps one called Discoography. I listen to Stanley Clarke records to hear him cut loose on the bass, not to sing “I Just Want To Love You.” In the record’s defense, it’s only about half an album of sappy disco music; the other half features smart funk that suggests Was (Not Was) (e.g., “Finding My Way”) and Cameo (e.g., “Let’s Get Started”). As a bonus, you’ll hear what is probably the funkiest version of “Louie Louie” ever recorded. The pair’s commercial acumen paid off when the album reached the Top 40 (and topped the Jazz charts according to Billboard, the same company that gave us the Hot Black Singles chart) and scored the biggest hit of Duke’s career with “Sweet Baby.” Clarke repeated the exercise on his next album, Let Me Know You, with inferior results, so if you’re interested in his disco phase, The Clarke/Duke Project is probably the best place to start. Or you could just ignore this altogether and go back to listening to “Inca Roads.”

Kronomyth 1.0: BANANA REPUBLIC. The musical revolution of the late 1960s looked more like individual battles being fought by pockets of resistance. In California, they were rejecting the controlled expression of art. In England, they were rejecting the limitations of popular art. And in Andy Warhol’s New York pop factory, they were rejecting the conventional definition of art to find beauty in the unbeautiful. Velvet Underground & Nico is rightly regarded as a masterpiece of American rock music. There isn’t a single song on here that isn’t important, powerful and prescient. You could look at Andy Warhol’s soup can and question whether it was really art. You couldn’t listen to this record without understanding that the very definition of music had been inalterably revised. The unblinking intensity of “Venus in Furs,” the harrowing urban storytelling of “Heroin” and “I’m Waiting for the Man,” the European art-film aesthetics of “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and the sonic experimentation of “European Son” mixed with mainstream pop music like oil and water. Fifty years later, it’s still shocking to hear this music. Upon its release, the album’s shockwaves extended only to a small cadre of saboteurs and iconoclasts. It would take years for the full effect of the Velvet Underground to reach the mainstream in the form of the popular punk/alternative movement of the late 80s. You can could write a book about this record and still miss some important nuance: the deconstruction of the Beach Boys on “Run, Run, Run” and its role in the coastal culture wars, Lou Reed’s blasé imagery of violence over the years (“There She Goes Again”), the death of the lead singer during “Heroin,” etc. For a highly experimental record, it’s a nearly perfect one. Personally, I would have preferred to hear Nico take the lead on “Sunday Morning,” or the band to explore “The Black Angel’s Death Song” more deeply, but I’m really inventing flaws that don’t exist. Velvet Underground & Nico isn’t simply one of the most important records from the 60s. It’s one of the most important from the 70s and 80s. They never made another one quite like it, although you can hear some of the same ideas in the band’s later work and, to a lesser extent, in the solo music of Nico.

Kronomyth 3.0: THE LONE HUNTER. This is a true solo album: Robert Hunter singing and strumming on his lonesome in a London studio. Jack O’ Roses didn’t get a wide release and will cost you some coin today to acquire, which is a shame, since it’s an album that more people should hear. I’ll admit to being less than jazzed about the idea of Hunter without any help, but it turns out that he’s been honing his craft over the years. His vocals have rarely sounded so smooth (the Johnny Cash comparisons actually hold water this time) and he strums that guitar just fine. It’s interesting to hear Hunter’s interpretations of Dead classics such as “Box of Rain,” “Friend of the Devil” and “Reuben And Cérise,” but the real revelation occurs on the “Terrapin” suite. Here, Hunter has restored some lyrics that link it back to the “Lady of Carlisle” (via the Jack O’Roses) and presents the entire piece as a cleverly stitched story that bears a striking resemblance to Jethro Tull’s “Baker St. Muse” in spots. Truth be told, I expected this album to be a vanity project. Instead, it makes a compelling case for Robert Hunter as a solo artist; I’d pay to hear him after hearing this. Given simple adornment, the lyrics shine. More importantly, Hunter finally gets his say as to how these songs should be presented. It’s strange that Jack O’Roses hasn’t been re-issued on compact disc yet, especially in lieu of the endless archival releases that have been preserved in the digital domain. Once you’ve heard it, you won’t hear Hunter or these songs in the same light again.

Kronomyth 4.0: EMPIRICAL MILES. This is the first truly great Herbie Hancock record, featuring the current Miles Davis lineup with Freddie Hubbard as the newly coronated cornet. It’s a heavy benediction for Hubbard, who rises to the challenge with one of his greatest performances on the opening “One Finger Snap.” This first track is fiery stuff played at breakneck speed with precision and soul, breathtaking in execution and rich in the musical possibilities brought into its expansive vista. The influence of Miles had a remarkable effect on everyone; compare this to the performance of Hancock and Tony Williams on My Point of View from the previous year, and you’ll swear that years have passed. Williams was still developing his trademark style, but the solo on “One Finger Snap” is a quantum leap in the right direction. The second track, “Oliloqui Valley,” is one of my favorite Hancock compositions of all time. Where the opening number rushes in, this song is cautious coolness that gives Hancock the spotlight. Ron Carter’s solo during “Oliloqui Valley” is classic; he literally pulls the song apart in a slow-motion dissection of his instrument. (The alternate take of “Oliloqui Valley” included on the expanded remaster features a less radical solo.) The classic “Cantaloupe Island” joins a storied line of tasty treats to come from Hancock’s amazing melon and outswings them all. The record ends on an experimental note with “The Egg,” an avant-garde exploration of sound and musical interrelationships that couldn’t be more far removed from “Cantaloupe Island” if they were Australia and Antigua. The earlier albums from Hancock, while enjoyable, were mere sketches compared to the masterpieces of Empyrean Isles, Maiden Voyage and Speak Like A Child, any one of which is likely to turn up in a list of the greatest jazz albums of all time.

Joan’s third album, and first with producer Glyn Johns, was a charmer; her third album with Johns, not so much. To The Limit is the weakest of her classic albums. There are no big hits, no breathtaking melodies, no heart-melting ballads. What you will find here are quite a few near-misses: “Barefoot And Pregnant,” “Wishing,” “Bottom To The Top,” “You Rope You Tie Me.” In a different setting (say, without the lyricon, which was always a strange musical beast) and, sorry, with a different producer (so much for services rendered, Mr. Johns), To The Limit could have been a better album. Or maybe the restless feel of the record reflects the artist’s fractured state of mind; I’m just some dork speculating on a computer, right? What I do know is that the albums before and after got under my skin, and this one kind of makes my skin crawl with its ungainly and difficult arrangements. The lovely live version of “You Rope You Tie Me” from Steppin’ Out suggests that the studio arrangements are the main culprit. You want “Baby I” to flow as smooth as “Warm Love” (it’s still a pretty great song) or “Barefoot And Pregnant” to jump with joy like “Show Some Emotion.” They don’t, instead limping along some of the time (“Let It Last”) or running too fast (“Taking My Baby Up Town”). You wish Joan would slow down, stop changing speeds, let the melodies breathe. The talent on To The Limit is obviously there, even if the mood is dour. But it appears the Glyn Johns honeymoon was over, and the man seems as baffled by her musical contradictions as previous producers. This might make my top 10 Joan Armatrading albums because of the creativity behind it, but top five, no.

Tangerine Dream’s second album, Alpha Centauri, marks the beginning of their classic period. It’s a substantially different record than their first, recorded with a substantially different lineup. Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler had left, leaving Froese plus new recruits Steve Schroyder and an 18-year-old drummer named Chris Franke to fill the void. And fill it they did, with a new lexicon of space sounds that prominently featured synthesizers for the first time alongside guitar, drums, organ and flute. From the opening moments of “Sunrise In The Third System,” Alpha Centauri reveals a band on a (space) mission. Instead of alien and disembodied sounds, the music moves purposefully and builds in intensity, existing as a single organism toward a shared goal. Electronic Meditation was fascinating at times but often sounded like three people doing their own thing. On Alpha Centauri, it appears that Froese has taken control of the ship, and it’s a much smoother flight for it. The first track could be seen as a kind of decompression chamber that helps the listener get acclimated to the alien landscape of Tangerine Dream’s musical world. The thirteen-minute “Fly And Collision of Comas Sola” slowly builds a heroic theme that eventually crashes into chaos via an amazing drum solo from new member Chris Franke. Its abrupt ending is one of the great mindtricks in the electronic canon. The side-long title track features very sophisticated (for their time) recording techniques that bend traditional sounds into alien shapes; gongs, synthesizers and flutes are blended into what seems like the tuning of the orchestral cosmos. It’s on this piece that the classical comparisons hold; in some ways, “Alpha Centauri” is a pastoral tone poem for the space age, the post-nuclear progeny of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony in which Pan finds himself transplanted into a new world of strange creatures. If the band’s first album had seemed better suited to a horror film, Alpha Centauri is firmly in the science fiction camp. It’s one of the first truly great electronic records, and the first of many fantastic journeys to come. Later reissues of the album included both sides of the band’s mind-blowing “rock” single, “Ultima Thule,” plus the eight-minute atmospheric, “Oszillator Planet Concert.”

Christopher Franke and Richard E. Roth mounted a performance of Franke’s works at the Royal Apollo Theatre in London, showcasing recent selections from his first solo album, Pacific Coast Highway, interspersed with some old and new material, which is captured on The London Concert. As live recordings go, this is a pristine affair; other than some enthusiastic applause at the end of the performances, this could pass for a new studio recording (which, I suppose, is the advantage of making music with machines). For Tangerine Dream fans, The London Concert is probably the safest musical entry point into his solo catalog. You’ll hear that the Highway selections are lighter fare, featuring what I’ve derisively referred to in the past as frothy melodies (“Purple Waves,” “Black Garden View”). The closing “Private Diaries,” one of two “bonus” tracks included here (bonus in the sense that they don’t appear to be from the original concert), is another perky entry that probably dates from the Pacific Coast period. Fortunately, The London Concert strikes a balance between Franke’s lighter and darker halves, with the new (at least to me) “Empire of Light” and “Vermillion Sands” recalling the turbulent Dream of old. Those two tracks plus the classic “Cloudburst Flight” and more recent “Dolphin Dance” will provide enough substance to satisfy the Dreamers. What The London Concert doesn’t provide is an answer to the question of why Franke needed to leave Tangerine Dream to make music (“Purple Waves”) that sounded a lot like contemporary Tangerine Dream. As I’ve said before, none of the Franke albums are compulsory purchases unless you enjoy new age music or mid-period Vangelis, with this being more compelling than most of them.

Nico’s first solo album out of the Underground was a powerful declaration of artistic integrity… that the record label crapped all over in the form of encroaching and annoying strings and flutes. You can hear how special Chelsea Girl should have been on the simply adorned “Eulogy To Lenny Bruce.” Now, that isn’t to say that the orchestral touches don’t have a marzipan charm to them, especially on “These Days” and “Chelsea Girls.” In fact, listeners already familiar with “The Fairest of the Seasons” and “These Days,” both prominently featured in the film The Royal Tenenbaums, might have a hard time imagining this album without strings. But the added orchestration, done without the knowledge or consent of Nico, completely obscures her original artistic vision. I mean, who would listen to a line like “excrement filters through the brain, hatred bends the spine” (from “Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams”) and think yeah, a flute would go great right here? The genius of Nico is like a rose in the desert. Her music depends on aridity and a certain rigidity. Her later albums capture this, but they don’t feature the standout songwriting of Chelsea Girl. Jackson Browne’s contributions in particular shine, which is pretty amazing given the fact that the album’s other songwriters are named Lou Reed, John Cale and Bob Dylan. Chelsea Girl was supposed to be Nico’s coming out party, not Nico done up as some 60s party doll like New York’s answer to Marianne Faithfull. It’s still a beautiful record because all the ugliness is audible underneath, but it’s ultimately a flawed gem for the very reason that Tom Wilson and the labels tried to cover up the flaws. Someday, someone should release this album in an expanded avec/sans orchestra mix, if only to give Nico’s debut its due.

Christopher Franke was a member of Tangerine Dream from Alpha Centauri (1971) through Canyon Dreams (1987). He originally joined the Dream as an 18-year-old drummer, having previously played with Agitation Free. Along with founder Edgar Froese, Franke was a principal architect of the Tangerine Dream sound through the 70s and early 80s. His sequencer work on Rubycon and after changed the sound and shape of electronic music.

Disenchanted with what he felt was the band’s increasingly formulaic approach to making music (no argument there), Franke left Tangerine Dream to pursue a solo career. You would be right for thinking that his solo music would be less productized than Tangerine Dream. But you would be wrong, dead wrong. Franke’s first official release, Pacific Coast Highway, was frothy new age music that made the mid-80s Tangerine Dream sound like Zeit. Over the years, Franke would split his time between soundtracks (including the television sci-fi series, Babylon 5) and new age releases.

If you enjoy new age electronic music, I would recommend checking out Pacific Coast Highway, The London Concert and The Celestine Prophecy (yeah, I know, right?). But on the off chance that you’re expecting a return to the dark corridors of the old Dream, you won’t find it among the works of Franke.

This is an even better showcase for her multi-faceted musical talents than her last album, and that album was stunning. Again produced by Glyn Johns but now featuring a wider cast of characters, Show Some Emotion includes two of her best songs, “Show Some Emotion” and “Willow,” and strong material from end to end that tries out a variety of styles. At this stage, the comparison to other artists is meaningless as Joan has entered an incomparable state. There isn’t another artist who moves so gracefully and confidently between ballads, rockers, reggae and blues, or would lead an album off with a vulnerable song like “Woncha Come On Home” and then sucker punch you with “Show Some Emotion.” Her last album was a leap forward in terms of musicality, yet Show Some Emotion feels even more saturated in sound. Much of the credit goes to Glyn Johns, who assembled a stellar backing band for Joan that re-used a few familiar parts (Jerry Donahue, Brian Rogers) and added Georgie Fame, Bryan Garofalo, David Kemper and others to the mix. Given the right musical accompaniment, Joan’s compositions soar. Although I did say that comparisons no longer applied, the presence of Georgie Fame did get me thinking about Van Morrison and the great musical support he’s had over the years. Like Van, Joan needs to make an emotional connection for her music to truly work, and that can sometimes be daunting given the complexity of her music. In the right hands, it runs like a graceful tiger. Even when Joan slows down on this record, the stride is perfectly paced, the steps perfectly placed, and happy are the hunted.